


breathe

by Handful_of_Silence



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 12:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3937312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Handful_of_Silence/pseuds/Handful_of_Silence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This is the only thing he can give Matt. His silence. He has nothing else to offer.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathe

It is becoming difficult to breathe through his nose. It sounds too loud, rattling on the exhale, and the slow-burn sensation from the swelling is not going down. There is blood in his teeth, and his chest shudders with the aftershocks of ruined sobbing. He’s long crossed the stage of being ashamed he cried. The tears aren’t dry on his face yet.

His breath hitches again, and when he dry swallows, it’s like he’s inhaling glass. He is trying to calm down, but he is not yet winning that war. 

He says nothing, keeps his eyes shut. 

Remembers that he chose this. 

“Nothing to say to me, Mr Nelson?”

He’s long past the stage where he might make jokes. The films made it look like he could wise-crack through this, take the punches with a laugh, goad and joke and come out smiling and snarling with bloodied teeth. The films lied. For a while he thought he might try and be brave, but he is not a brave man. He consoled himself that his continued survival was a small, everyday bravery, small enough for him to master, small enough to still mean something, but all it means is that he’s scared and trembling and that he was never brave to start with. 

He begged them not to when they first hit him. Cried. Gradually he stopped asking. 

He does not know how long he’s been here. Long enough for him to have been left alone, hands winch-tight behind his back, half-curled on the floor. He had thought of escape, but knew he couldn’t even crawl at that point. By the time the men came back, he’d been lying there for hours and he’d pissed himself, and they’d laughed as they dragged his sodden trousers off over his snapped leg. He’d screamed with a double-ringed tinnitus of agony and shame. 

There are tight fingers in his matted hair again, clearing it from where it hangs limply across his forehead. The grasp tugs on the bruises forming across his scalp. 

“Just tell us what you know, that’s all.”

He knows that the last time he saw Karen, he’d told her a joke about Heaven and Hell and lawyers. It hadn’t been one of his best, but she’d laughed anyway, and they’d then discussed their lack of baseball knowledge over cooling coffee, like confiding it was a benediction. Matt had arrived with only one new bruise, which Foggy had known about because the Daredevil had snuck through his kitchen window at the early hours and knocked over a cup sitting on the draining board. Foggy had tried to tell Matt the joke about the lawyers, but Matt beat him to the punchline. He had pretended to be disappointed, and Matt had smiled, full-mouth, showing teeth. It had been a good morning. 

This is not what they want to know, but it is what he wants to hold on to. 

The hand clenches tighter, and he flinches, sobs. There is a wet sound in his chest. 

“If you’re hiding him, we’ll know.”

He does not want to be a hero. It hurts more than he thought it would. His body is prickled with the timeline of how little he’s fought them, repeated images of violence, blood blooming under his skin. He is terrified, and it’s the shameful sort of fear which paralyzes him, stoppers up in his chest. He thinks he might cry again. 

He whimpers low in his throat, turning to a gurgling gasp when his head is slammed hard enough against the concrete floor. 

This is the only thing he can give Matt. His silence. He has nothing else to offer. 

He wishes Matt could be here to forgive him. He is sorry he couldn’t be brave enough. He’s sorry he’s lost faith already. He knows that no-one is coming for him. 

He’s crying mechanically now, face crumpled, eyes clenched shut but not stopping the tears, thinking about Matt. Their in-jokes and fist-bumps and the black-and-gold sign for their own practice that uncurls something unironically happy under his ribs. Thinking of these things makes his crying verge on hysterical, makes him cry in a way that makes him frightened because it implies he’s lost them already. 

A foot kicks his broken leg and he wails, smothering the sound against the floor. There is something scraping along the floor coming nearer, metallic, heavy. 

“You’ll die here if you don’t say anything. Just a name.”

Matthew Murdock, his traitorous brain supplies. Zealous and desperate to live and eager for everything to just stop. It’s just one name, one name and they won’t hurt him again. This can’t be worth his life.

He thinks of the big victories that Daredevil wins, news-reports of people saved, of families reunited, the city dismantled and put back together into something a little bit better, a little bit brighter. Thinks of Matt’s smaller victories of a more mundane sort, the cases they’ve won together, his triumphant closing speeches, the gratitude on their client’s faces. 

This shouldn’t have to be worth his life, but he says nothing aloud because it is. 

He breathes in glass again, sniffling, and just lies limp and ruined on the floor. 

His silence. That’s all he needs to give. 

“Make an example of him,” the voice says, backlit by a frustrated disappointment. It sounds further away than before. “ This should get the Daredevil's attention.”

_Matt_ , his brain thinks, his lips shape. Feels the inherent apology weighted like a stone in his mouth. 

Through the one eye he can still see through, the light strikes unnatural through grimy basement windows. The shadows bleach red momentarily. He remembers the joke about Heaven and Hell and lawyers. 

He wants a better end than to die here, but this is what he has been given. A pathetic end, a mangled car-crash of a man who went through the windscreen and didn’t think to learn the brutal rules of this game, choking down blood and spit and screams and glass. Goosebumps pebbling on his arms against the cool of the ground, his exposed legs going numb. He would curl up on himself further if he could stand to move. He is so terribly frightened and he does not want to die. 

He wants Matty to light a candle for him, in the church. The idea suddenly seems very important. 

Something touches his face, icy, heavy, and fear slams hard into his lungs, makes breathing simply the act of pretending he is still able to. 

It’s just one name. 

It’s _Matt’s_ name. 

“You’re out of chances.”

He knows. He exhales, the sound ragged. 

“Who is the Daredevil, Mr Nelson?”

Daredevil is late nights where Matt doesn’t come home and the morning becomes an afterthought that means his best friend hasn’t died that night, nights when Foggy sleeps with his windows unlocked and his phone clutched sweaty in his hand. Daredevil is shaking hands around a mug of coffee, and wild rash promises made in the form of sincere prayers. Daredevil is long hours and early mornings and that clatter of terror in his chest like he’s mimicking drowning when he counts Matt’s bruises. 

Matt is different than all of this, despite being the same. He is long nights trawling case files, and empty takeaway boxes and a solid shape knocking against him with a smile, a strange wounded man who Foggy has claimed as his own. Matt is a blood-rush to his heart in a way he doesn’t quite understand just yet, why he is going to die here breathing in glass and so terribly frightened, why even now he can’t tell them, he can’t. It’s not bravery, it was never bravery, because he knows he is not that sort of man. 

But he can pretend to be. Just for the moment. For Matt. 

He’s not dying for Daredevil, not really. 

He howls when the baseball bat collides against his bones. He’s sure he whimpers _don’t_ and _please_ , as it happens again and again and again. He hears the crack of things breaking inside of him and half-choked screaming, and he is running out of ways to stay alive. It feels like his skin is barely holding him together. Nothing has ever hurt as much as this.

He does not say Matt’s name. 

He is still drifting in and out of consciousness when they stop hitting him. His body twitches, his chest tight. He breathes in glass with a wet unhealthy sound, and does not open his eyes. 

He doesn’t know how long afterwards he hears something other than the sound of his own breathing. There is noise, but it lingers on the periphery of understanding. In time, he hears the harsh click of a number being punched in. 

“… please, he needs an ambulance… he doesn’t have much time…please…”

Someone’s hands skim feather-light over his chest. The dull pain of ruined skin around his wrists sparks up, and there is the rasp of bloodied rope being cut. 

“Fog… I’m here, I’m here… please, hold on… Oh Christ, you don’t sound right...hold on.”

He doesn’t reply because he has no words and he can only think in fragments. The Devil is leaning over him, and for once it wears the face of his friend. 

He thinks if he could manoeuvre a word into place, he would tell Matt that he is holding on. He wouldn’t say he’s ok, because it’s not. Too much has been snapped and twisted and splintered along hairline fractures. He will take a long time to heal, and maybe he won't, not fully. There will be scars and he will make his peace with that. He will tell Matt that in time.

For the moment, if he could, he would tell him that he thought he was going to die here but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have the luxury of hoping otherwise. 

He would carry on and say that he is not a brave man, and never will be, and that’ s ok. That the only thing he could give Matt was his silence, and he does not regret a word he did not say. 

All these things are too big for him to say aloud. 

“Foggy… just, just hold on,” Matt’s voice sounds crumpled, damp. “I’ve got you.”

He knows Matt does. He has never doubted that. 

He thinks of the joke about Heaven and Hell and lawyers, and wonders if sometimes it can be that simple after all. 

He struggles to remain present. Just a little longer. That’s all it’ll take. Matt will not leave him. He knows this. He is not a brave man, nor a strong one, but he can pretend to be for Matt. 

Trembling hands are stroking his hair back from his face. He feels bone-tired. Worn down. Matt will keep him safe. 

Foggy breathes in like he’s swallowing glass as the sirens get closer.

**Author's Note:**

> Daredevil Prompt: Kidnapped Foggy, hurt/comfort.


End file.
